ABOUT US

Located in the heart of the nation’s fourth largest city, South Texas College of Law Houston is a private, independent institution that has earned a reputation for providing students an exceptional, relevant, practical legal education that fully prepares them for a career in the profession.

ACADEMIC RESOURCES

FRED PARKS LAW LIBRARY

The Fred Parks Law Library offers students access to more than 90 law-related databases; a comprehensive range of government documents; special collections, including rare books, manuscripts, and archives; and legal research guides. These resources are all designed not only to support students in the classroom, but also to better prepare them for employment after graduation.

STUDENT SERVICES

South Texas College of Law Houston provides students with a full range of services and opportunities to enhance their learning experience. We offer nearly 40 special-interest student organizations, technology support, academic counseling, and assistance in pursuing employment, internships, and clerkships.

CAREER RESOURCES

South Texas College of Law Houston is committed to helping our students maximize their potential for a successful, rewarding career. We help students to locate opportunities in private practice, public interest, government, and business; provide career counseling and job search advice; offer assistance identifying and applying for clerkships and internships; and connect students with alumni and other potential employers.

ALUMNI AND FRIENDS

More than 15,000 South Texas College of Law Houston alumni live and work across the U.S. and the globe. Every new graduate is automatically a member of the Alumni Association.
Our alumni have achieved success in private practice, the judiciary, as general counsels, and in government and public service. Additionally, we have built partnerships with friends of the law school who share our vision and seek to support our mission.

Beginning Tuesday, March 17 and until further notice, STCL Houston will close to outside visitors and only essential personnel will be expected to report to work. Supervisors will reach out to staff with additional information on modified operations. Staff should contact their supervisors or HR with questions. The school will provide additional updates as they become available. Please visit www.stcl.edu/health for updated information.

Areas of Expertise

Matt Festa teaches and researches in the areas of property law and land use, state & local government, energy & environmental law, trusts & estates, legal history, and national security law. His scholarship focuses on the relation between property rights and public control in land use planning and government regulation; on the role of property rights in constitutional law and history; and on property and the rule of law in contemporary international affairs.

Professor Festa joined the South Texas College of Law Houston faculty in 2007, after serving as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Georgia School of Law. Prior to teaching, he practiced in litigation, land use, environmental, and energy law at Locke Lord LLP. He served as a law clerk to federal judges on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Prof. Festa attended Vanderbilt University, where he was the Executive Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review and earned a masters’ degree in history. Prior to law school he served in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, and earned a masters’ degree in public administration. He earned his undergraduate degree in history and English at the University of Notre Dame.

Professor Festa currently serves as a judge advocate in the U.S. Army Reserve, where he is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of International & Operational Law at the ABA-accredited Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, and is also an Instructor with the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies. He is the editor of the Land Use Prof Blog, and lives in the “Unzoned City” of Houston with his spouse, who teaches at Rice University, and their two children.

Contributor, Barry Friedman & John C.P. Goldberg, Open Book: Succeeding on Exams from the First Day of Law School (New York: Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, 2011).

Contributing Author, The Rule Of Law Handbook: A Practitioner’s Guide for Judge Advocates, 2008. (Charlottesville, VA: Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, U.S. Army, Center for Law and Military Operations, 2008).

Property Ownership in America from Jefferson to the Mortgage Crisis and Beyond , Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Boston, MA 2009.

Invited speaker, “Guantanamo and the Rule of Law,” Symposium on National Security, Civil Liberties, & Guantanamo: Implications on the Eve of the Closing, Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Texas Southern University, 2009.

The Role of Property Rights in Promoting the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Societies , National Security Law Junior Scholar Workshop, University of Texas at Austin, 2009.

The Application of a Usable Past: Toward a Reconciliation of the Professional Standards of History and Law , Biennial Meeting of The Historical Society, 2004.

Private Rights and the Public Good: The Northwest Ordinance, Property Law, and Constitutionalism in the Early Republic , Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), 2003.